From Assisted Living to Nursing Home (Sat, 9 Apr, 2011)

Mom has declined significantly in the past two days. Since yesterday I kind of feel like our living situation here has gone from assisted living to nursing home. She can barely walk, mostly due to pain in her right hip, but it seems that she is now even having difficulty moving her left leg and coordinating the two.

Last night I heard something around midnight and came downstairs to find that she had been able to get up and make her way out the door of her bedroom to the commode. I asked her if she'd like a sip of water, and she said yes, so I handed her a small plastic cup half full of water. She took it, but a minute later her hand jerked and she lost her grip on it and dumped it in her lap. I got some dry clothes on her and got her back into bed.

This morning I heard her call me around 6am so I went downstairs. She was lying in her bed with all the covers thrown aside. I asked what she needed and she said, "Nothing, I am just lying here!" I was surprised that she had thrown off the covers, because she is ALWAYS cold, but she said that she had gotten too hot. That was a surprise. I sat with her for a bit, then she said she would go back to sleep, so I tucked her in and went back upstairs.

About 8:30AM I came back down to take Charlie out for his morning constitutional. Mom woke up and said she would like to get into her chair for a change of position. First I helped her use her walker to get across the living room to the bathroom, and it was a real marathon. I wasn't sure she had the strength to make it, but eventually she did. When she finished, I had her sit on the seat of her walker while I pulled her back out to her chair, because I was pretty sure she couldn't make it on her own.

Our plan had been to go into town to meet Steve the Hospice Nurse Practitioner at the Klamath Walk-In Clinic where he works, and he was going to inject her hip with cortisone. I had serious doubts about whether she could make it up to her car, but she said, "We will call L--, he will help." I said, " No, L has a bad back, we are NOT going to ask him to do this." Then ensued a lecture about how you have to let your friends help you. It was about 32 degrees outside, with ice on the back steps, and mom can barely walk 5 feet. Hmmm... So while I was pondering what to do, she decided that I should call the clinic to see if they would let her have the injection without an X-ray (she was adamant that she would not have an x-ray because it would be too painful to get into position on the hard table). So I called and found to my surprise that Steve is not in this weekend. They had given me misinformation last night. So that solved that problem.

I called Hospice and spoke to the on-call nurse to ask if there were any way to have someone come out to do the injection here. She said she would call Steve, who was in Portland, and get back to me. Turned out that his message was, "Call me on Monday." So at least that removed the pressure to figure out how to get her up to the car.

During the day today her condition has declined further, to the point that I just put her to bed and moved the commode next to the bed so she will only have to stand up and take two steps. She woke up around 5pm. She said that she feels weird, but when I ask how, she can't explain except to say that she is having trouble "coordinating things." She commented at one point that maybe she had a small stroke, but I told her I didn't think so, because she can talk just fine and she can still move about the same as earlier. Eventually I got her back into bed and she is now sleeping again. I have a baby monitor that I set up in her room this afternoon, so I can now hear her very clearly from upstairs. She is breathing very slowly and regularly, about 6 respirations a minute.